


never mind your bleeding heart

by chii



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Kink Meme, M/M, Nightmares
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-20
Updated: 2017-08-20
Packaged: 2018-12-17 20:35:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11859195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chii/pseuds/chii
Summary: He felt it, when Shiro landed back on Earth again. A connection, a bond, something -- the same thing that drew him to the lion, maybe, back when Shiro had wound up captive at the Garrison facility.Would he feel something when he died? Would there be some sudden sense of awareness, the difference between being in a light flooded room only for it to go dark abruptly, or would it be an awful, slow, creeping realization?[kmeme fill]





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> this kmeme fill has been done for like a month but I've been traveling insane amounts and haven't been able to do much. the link to the original post is [here](https://voltron-kink.dreamwidth.org/1161.html?replyto=616073). Unbetad so all mistakes are my own.

Being captured by the Galra was always a possibility, but Keith doesn’t know if any of them fully considered what it would mean for that to _happen_. It was one thing to think that one of them might fall in battle, or that a mistake would really mean one of their lives, but it was something else all together to realize that death on the field might not be the worst thing that could happen to them. 

When the Castleship falls, they manage to get Black to take Coran and Allura as far away from them as possible. The other lions are scattered once more, Red and Black just barely teasing at the edge of his senses. Where it was once like standing in the center of a sun, it’s now as if someone unspooled a star, dragged it out the length of the universe so he can just barely touch it. 

It’s for the best - until they find a way out of this, because they _will_ find a way out of this. If they don’t, well. At least Allura has the connection with the lions and they know to find her should anything go wrong. They can find new paladins. When Keith points that out to Shiro, quiet but not quiet enough, Lance inhales sharply and he can _feel_ Hunk’s accusing glare, even if Hunk wasn’t close enough to hear what was said. 

Beside him, Lance is ramrod straight, hands curled into fists on top of his knees, shoulders squared, staring straight ahead at the wall - at nothing. “I just - Blue and the others were out there so long and she was so _lonely_.” 

Which, Keith knows is part of it, but it’s not just that. He and Shiro exchange long looks and Shiro rises up, slowly, like the motion makes every inch of him ache. It probably does; they’re all bruised and bleeding in various places, but he’s still taking on the mantle of leader, still trying to do what he can even now. Shiro crouches down in front of Lance and Keith has to bite his tongue; he saw the Galra that kicked Shiro’s leg out from under him, heard the sharp, harsh scream over comms. It’s not twice its size, but it _is_ swollen and Shiro’s acting like he doesn’t even notice. Of course he would, to make sure the others are comfortable. 

Whatever Shiro says to him is inaudible because besides being a better leader, Shiro’s also got decent volume control which means that Keith’s left to survey the others. Hunk’s in the corner, hand clutching the shallow rip in his suit. The blood’s dried already, flaking onto his hand, onto the white of the suit. Out of the five of them, he’s the least injured. Pidge is in the other corner, positioned just so she can see every single interaction with the touchpad that controls their cage doors. Under the wrist of her armor, she’s been fiddling with something, but Keith’s not sure _what_. There’s not much they can do from inside, but they’re going to be taken out to be fought in the Ring, that much was made clear. If they can survive just once, they have a shot for later. 

The only saving grace right now is that they’re too far from the flagship for Haggar or Lotor to be nearby. They’ve clearly talked to them already - the first hour in the cell, one of the commanders recognized Shiro and had tried to taunt him with the fact that they were likely just going to be tossed into the ring and picked off, one by one because Haggar didn’t need them any longer. Shiro - brave, stupid Shiro, had pushed himself right up against the bars and told the Galra that if he was so confident they were going to get wasted in the Ring, maybe he should try his luck then and there. He’d gotten a bloody mouth for his trouble, but judging by the vicious, red-stained smile at the Galra, he’d won some kind of battle that the rest of them weren’t aware of. 

“-- sit _down_ , Shiro, you can’t fight with your leg like that,” Lance finally hisses and it’s enough to draw the attention of all of them to Shiro, who is being manhandled into the seat next to Lance, not protesting or fighting in the slightest. “And tell them what you told me.” 

He was already going to tell the rest of them before he was interrupted, no doubt, Keith wants to point out but he stays silent, slouching against the wall closest to the door. One ear is trained for the sound of the door opening, hoping they can rush the guards if they get a chance. Thus far, they haven’t been removed from the cell but _maybe_. 

“Don’t suppose it’s an escape plan?” Hunk says hopefully, glancing between the two of them, and then to Keith for the briefest of seconds. It’s not long, but it’s enough to make Keith’s skin crawl; he had only led the team for a few months before Shiro returned to them. Every time they looked to him for something, anything, he wanted to point out that their real leader was back and that’s what they should be focusing on. Instead, he looks to Shiro, too, pointedly. 

“If Haggar and Lotor want to make sure we’re not in the way, they’re going to do what they can to get rid of us at a distance. Execution isn’t enough, not with what we’ve done, which means that they’re going to make us put on a show.” Despite everything, Shiro’s voice is even - he’s giving a sitrep, a presentation. Keith isn’t sure the others fully realize just what it’s costing him to be in here, knowing what’s going to happen. “They won’t dare fight us as one group; it’ll be individual.” 

“This is the worst escape plan,” Hunk murmurs, very quietly and Keith can’t give up his spot by the door lest anyone come to check on them but both Lance and Shiro have it covered. Lance throws himself between Pidge and Hunk and shoves himself under one of his arms, and Shiro, slower, more gingerly, scoots over and touches a hand to his shoulder. “This isn’t an escape plan, is it.” 

“Allura and Coran escaped. They’ll bring reinforcements and the lions are safe,” Pidge points out, adjusting the glasses on her nose, only to look away a moment later when footsteps echo down the hallway. The entire room holds its breath, but no, they pass and just like that, the tension bleeds out of them just a little bit. “Can’t we just refuse to put on a show?” 

The question is innocuous enough, but Keith watches Shiro go to respond and then stop, mouth opening and then closing, hand curling into a fist on his knee. 

“Shiro.” Keith can’t recall the last time his voice was that sharp, that loud, but it works. It snaps Shiro out of the flashback and puts him back into his own body again. He can’t do anything useful like this, but he can keep Shiro steady. That has to count for something. He has to count for _something_. 

“No. They’ll - if we don’t fight, they’ll find a way to make you fight. Trust me on that. They want a show; our best bet is making sure that we give them one. All of you know how to fight and know what you’re best at - play to that. Determine if your opponent is ranged or not. Figure out how to use the arena, any weapons - anything you can think of, to take them down. If it’s safe -- and only, _only if it’s safe_ , make a show of it.” 

“Make a show?” Lance asks flatly. “What good is making a cage fight flashy if one or both of us is just gonna end up-”

“Lance,” Hunk beats him to the punch this time, but it’s low, soft and understanding in a way that Keith will never be able to truly wrap his mind around being. He wishes he could; wishes he were that competent at human interactions in general but there’s only so much he can learn from a father who he can barely say raised him. 

It works; Lance settles, and presses himself more fully into Hunk’s side, pushes his face into the broad sweep of his shoulder and hugs him so tightly that Keith sees his knuckles go white. They’re scared - they’re all scared, but Lance has always been more open about his emotions than the rest of them. 

There’s something horrific, nauseating about Shiro being the one to have to train them to survive in an arena that they all know will probably kill them - that he escaped once - if not twice, but is being dragged back to. Keith can’t do anything about it, either; there’s no privacy in this cell and while they’re used to a level of being together, it’s different. There’s no way to drag Shiro off and talk to him without being overheard and Keith knows him well enough to know that while comfort might help, Shiro deals best with this kind of thing by planning, trying to fix it, not being coddled. 

“Make it flashy. Play it up. Part of why I survived so long is that the audience liked how I fought. I got a title. I made a scene. They remembered me, which meant that I couldn’t be executed, because the Galra didn’t want to risk losing their star player. We have enough notoriety that it might be worth something.” Shiro inhales after he finishes, like he wants to say something else but one look at Keith stills him and he opts to turn toward Lance instead, and touches a hand to his shoulder. “Words aren’t enough to-” 

“No, Shiro-”

“Don’t- Shiro, don’t, okay, please, I can’t -” 

For a moment, the room erupts into everyone trying to stop him from finishing the sentence, not out of anger, though. Keith gets it - Shiro apologizing, or telling them it was an honor, or that he loves them, that they mean something to him - all of them know that already. There’s nothing to apologize, nothing to own up to. He looks startled by it, all the same: eyes wide, lips parted, staring at all of them before gingerly sinking back, letting Hunk and Lance envelop him in a hug that punches the breath out of him. 

If he says it - if he apologizes, or implies that they’re not getting out of this, it becomes real. Another few moments of pretending like it’s not the end is something they all need. 

The next few hours are spent with Shiro going over weapons he remembers, alien weaknesses and strengths, what sort of things they’re likely to encounter in the arena. It goes unsaid that they’ll likely change things up to keep them from winning, but doing something is better than doing nothing so they listen, they try to memorize it. Halfway through Shiro going over an alien race that has poisonous spines all over its back, they hear footsteps again, loud and decisive -- too many to be anything but for them. They go silent and Keith doesn’t _think_ \- the moment the door opens, he twists around it, sizing up the first one to step towards the door and lashes out. 

It’s a stupid plan - he knows it is, but it’s one thing to think it and another to take a punch to the face so hard that he gets knocked backward and slams into the ground with a crack of head against metal. For a moment, he’s not sure if it’s the ringing in his ears and the sound of his own harsh, ragged breathing or everyone else, but by the time he regains himself and his vision fades back from seeing multiples, it’s too late. Lance is pressed against the door, spitting insults in three different languages, Hunk has Keith’s head in his lap and is gently pressing fingers to it to see where he’s injured and Pidge is still by the door, white-faced but staring at the interface with single-minded determination, her fingers working at something behind the material of her paladin outfit. Another sweep of the room and Keith realizes what’s happened. He inhales raggedly and coughs on the taste of his own blood, feeling it seep down the back of his throat and down his mouth, wet. 

“Shiro-- _Shiro, no!_ He can’t- I have to _tell him-”_ It sounds pathetic- he sounds pathetic, but Shiro’s gone and he couldn’t _do anything_ and the terror that claws at him like some awful, inky beast inside his chest is too much to bear. “Let me up-- _Shiro!_ I’m fine, I-” 

“You’re not fine,” Hunk says quietly, one big hand splaying across Keith’s chest to keep him down while the other finds the painful part on the back of his head and gently examines it. “You did what you could, we all did, and he knows. Okay? I promise he knows, whatever it is.” 

He doesn’t, though. Keith’s never been good with words, never had the easy way with them that everyone else did, never been able to put meaning to the awful hole in his chest that Shiro and everyone else filled with all the warmth and light they possessed. It’s not fair, he thinks furiously; they only just got Shiro back and they haven’t had time to do anything. Wasn’t once enough - wasn’t one time of being trapped on a Galra ship, forced to fight and kill for entertainment _enough_? Wasn’t it enough that he’d only just escaped again, even more recently? Didn’t he, out of all of them deserve some sort of break? 

“Fuck,” Keith whispers, the word too close to the edge of a sob for him to like, but he supposes that if they’re all set to die in the next few hours, dignity around the people he thinks of as family isn’t quite so important. 

For a while, no one says anything. Keith tries to stand at one point and the world tips and turns around him, so he winds up back down on the ground, Hunk’s hand warm across his forehead. Suddenly, the armor he’s wearing feels too heavy, too constricting and he’s choking with the weight of it, with the knowledge that he’s useless now. Even more useless than he was before Shiro was taken. They were allowed to keep the armor only because Haggar had found it fitting to let them die in it - these ten thousand year old suits that meant something then, and started to mean something again. The old paladins died in them; it was fitting, they were told, that they did, too.

Lance takes to pacing the tiny room and then takes up Keith’s spot at the door, watching Pidge fiddle with whatever they’re working on but they’re quiet, after that. No one knows what to say but it means no one expects him to say anything, which he’s grateful for. There’s no way to track how much time passes, either; it feels like it takes ages, but there’s no way to tell except for the fact that he’s _hungry_. The flat, thin bars that were tossed into their cell earlier this morning were enough to satiate them a little but it was barely enough to do more than that. Behind him, Hunk’s stomach growls loud enough that everyone pauses and then Lance bursts into nervous, awful laughter. 

“Me too, buddy,” he offers, and nudges Keith’s boot affectionately with the tip of his own. The room falls back into silence and Keith tries to count the seconds. He felt it, when Shiro landed back on Earth again. A connection, a bond, something -- the same thing that drew him to the lion, maybe, back when Shiro had wound up captive at the Garrison facility. 

Would he feel something when he died? Would there be some sudden sense of awareness, the difference between being in a light flooded room only for it to go dark abruptly, or would it be an awful, slow, creeping realization? He tries to analyze his feelings, but there’s nothing there but the steady pounding of his head and the nauseous feeling every time he so much as moves. His nose isn’t broken, as far as he can tell, but it sure hurts like a son of a bitch and Hunk had murmured he might have a concussion which, great. That’s going to make the fight last that much shorter if he can’t get a handle on it. 

“Hey, Lance?” Pidge asks, their voice cutting across the grim quiet of the room. Keith opens his eyes and tries to focus on them as best as possible. There’s only one Pidge, not two, so that’s...something. “You want to make a scene for me?” 

“Oh, buddy, do I ever,” Lance runs his tongue over his teeth and grins, but it’s a mean thing, all sharp and angry. 

Hunk stops him before he can sit up and protest, so rather than argue and object, Keith waits, lets them do whatever they’re going to do. Lance pushes himself up against the door, fits his face against the slots barring them from the hallway and then in near perfect Galra, tells one of the guards something apparently awful enough that it gets his attention. Keith only recognizes a few words, but the tone and reaction are enough for him to figure out that whatever it was certainly wasn’t good. If it’s a scene they wanted, that’s what they get. Lance says something else - something about his mate, maybe, Keith’s not sure because he’d never bothered to learn much of it despite knowing he was part Galra. When Lance had the time to learn insulting phrases, he wasn’t really sure, but it didn’t matter.

The door whooshes open and Keith sits up so sharply that the world goes horrifically sideways and his stomach lurches with the threat of puking up bile and water. “Lance, don’t-” he tries, but it doesn’t matter; the Galra wraps one meaty fist around Lance’s throat and squeezes, choking off whatever was going to be said next. Near the door, Pidge flattens themselves, hands pressed against either wall like they’re trying to make themselves as small as possible and Hunk makes this awful, furious noise behind him, weight shifting as he starts to get up. 

“You’re lucky the witch wants all of you whole enough to kill soon; maybe she’ll let me into the arena with you so I can take your tongue out myself,” he purrs, and Lance makes an awful croaking sound, feet kicking at the Galra. When he’s dropped, he hits the floor like a sack of flour and the door hisses shut behind him, Pidge slamming their hand against it just as it closes. 

“S’okay,” Keith slurs at them, gingerly crawling across the cell to where Lance has both hands at his throat and is raggedly sucking in air. He can’t do much more than just sit there, his concussion - it’s definitely a concussion, great, fantastic - threatening to send him flat on his back if he moves too quickly. It’s enough to come close and press their shoulders together, though, the two of them leaning heavily on each other until Hunk settles behind them as a warm, steadying weight. “Was that supposed to happen?” 

“I dunno, Pidge?” Lance asks, voice sounding like it’s been put through a meat-grinder. Already, bruising is flowering up along the tan line of his neck and Keith’s close enough he sees the little prick marks of where claws dug into his throat, beading red. 

“Yeah.” Pidge does something with a twist of their wrist and their armor flares briefly before settling back to the matte green. “I don’t know, but we’ll try.” 

It is, he realizes, an escape plan. Whatever it was - Pidge working on something with their armor, being so close to the door panel, trying to get the door to open and close - there was some sort of plan. Lance making the scene, all of it. From the slow intake of breath behind him, he knows Hunk’s realized it too. Once, when this all started, he might have been upset about being left out of the plan. Now, he tries to push back the pain and focus on what’s necessary, understanding it. They’ll do what they have to to survive and rather than being stung, he’s pleased that somehow, despite everything, they’ve worked something out. 

“How long has it been?” There’s no way for any of them to know for sure, but a guess from someone without a concussion is better than nothing. He doesn’t feel any different, but maybe he wouldn’t, if Shiro were cut down in the Arena. Maybe he’d never know at all and if they get out, they’ll bring back a body. He refuses to believe anything until he sees a body, though. Shiro came back from what they all thought was dead, once. Keith wouldn’t give up on him again. 

“Hour, maybe two. Shiro said he longest his fight ever went was four hours and that was when he had to test out the arm.” Pidge’s voice is soft, slow, like she’s not sure if she wants to be mentioning this to begin with. 

Keith didn’t know that, but he can guess when Shiro and Pidge talked about it; Pidge had been doing work on Shiro’s arm the last few months since they got him back, trying to figure out the best way to fix it. Keith had stayed away from those meetings, but inevitably, afterward Shiro would seek either him or one of the others out and just sit with them like he was trying to overwrite whatever digging in his arm dredged to the surface. 

“Guys, we can’t do the whole escape thing with Keith like this,” Lance points out and Keith bristles. Shiro’s out there and every second they’re delayed - especially if they have the means to escape - is another minute that Shiro could be hurt and needing help. They have to be fast enough. He has to be enough. 

“Yes, we can. I’m fine.” Gingerly, he pushes himself up again, grateful Hunk doesn’t try and stop him. It takes longer than Keith likes and the world swims when he sits there but it doesn’t matter. Get him a gun with a large enough blast radius and he could hold his own til his head was fixed. “Third patrol has the heaviest weapons. We wait for them.” 

He’d been the one watching the doors, after all. Shiro’d mentioned what he remembered about their jailers already and Keith was pleased to notice that some things hadn’t ever changed which meant that they could depend upon on Shiro’s prior experience. Like right now; he braces himself against Hunk’s side and the patrol comes around. Pidge does something with the inside wiring of their suit when they place their hand against the wall. There’s a series of beeps, clicks and then it pops open just like that, Lance and Pidge darting out the newly opened door to take down the two guards. Not more than a moment later he hall erupts into chaos; Pidge replicates the jailbreak on every single cell, searching with a desperation Keith recognizes. There aren’t any humans here, though. 

Defeat is a hard thing to watch; Pidge’s shoulders slump and they stare at the assorted aliens before pushing their glasses up her nose, nodding at the hall. “We gotta find Shiro.” 

No one objects. The new aliens file in close and a few of them take posts on the outside of the group. Slowly, they make their way down the halls, taking down what and who they encounter until most of their group is armed. Annoyingly, Keith is kept towards the back but he understands why. The trail of blood leading from their cell out along the path they walk is at least 85% from him despite all best efforts to staunch it. He holds one hand to the injury at his side and staggers after them, letting Lance support him where necessary. “Are we following some kind of map, or-?”

Unfortunately, this far from the lions and with the Galra interference, questions don’t get answered. It’s a lot of gesturing and guessing with the aliens and ultimately it’s getting them nowhere; no one speaks a similar language, or the ones that do can’t communicate with the others past ‘danger’ or ‘follow’. They’re lost; there’s no two ways about it. Even miming battle doesn’t do any good; the others draw back from Lance when he gestures, watching him with wary looks.

“I don’t know how we’re supposed to find the arena if we don’t know how to say ‘what, you guys never learned about the Roman coliseum in alien school?” Lance mutters and just like that, an idea hits. 

“Slow down, let me --” Keith squeezes at Hunk’s arm and turns to their rag tag group, frowning as he tries to remember the word. God knows that Shiro’d used it enough times in nightmares and outside of them. In fractured, accented Galra he tries: “Arena. Champion.” 

One of them gets it instantly; his set of eye stalks wilt and he makes himself smaller; it takes Keith a moment to realize that he likely had two sets of eyes but what would have been the smaller pair is missing, ragged stalks left behind, flushed a dark, angry green. Another survivor from the ring. Rather than protest, he takes point with Lance at his side, silently guiding them through the mess of halls. Every so often, he casts Keith a look with one of the stalks; there’s no face to judge expressions with but Keith gets the feeling it’s pity. The third time, he grimaces and stares the alien down til he doesn’t look any longer. 

Finally, they make their way up an endless set of stairs and Pidge splits off with a smaller group to hunt down ships to hijack and a central command center to get into. Keith’s traded off from Hunk to Lance while Hunk takes two of the guns they’ve found and pops them open. With some creative rewiring and some cursing under his breath, they glow a hot pink for a moment and then Hunk sets it along the bar of the door, shooing everyone back. Slowly, the lights start to pulse and Keith makes a sound low enough he doesn’t think anyone hears it, tilting his head down. At his side, though, Lance is clearly close enough to hear but rather than say anything, he turns them, uses his body to shield Keith’s eyes and ears from the low boom of the explosion and flash of lighting as the guns explode and blow the cell door clean off. 

“Alright, fireworks over,” Hunk mutters and heads first up the steps, gun level, steady. 

Keith and Lance take up the tail end and his stomach drops to his feet the moment he hears a gasp ripple through the small crowd of survivors. Worse: Lance jerks his head down and gives him a brief, panicked look, speeding up with his thought process likely the same as Keith’s own. 

“He’s okay. He’s okay,” Lance whispers under his breath, adjusting his grip on Keith as they both take the stairs harder than they ought to with the injuries they’ve both sustained. When they get to the top, Keith’s lost patience for waiting; he elbowed their way through people gently but insistently and then stops. It was one thing to know that Shiro was called Champion in the Arena. They’ve all seen the nightmares he had as a result, watched the flashbacks, been with him when something sends him back here. What Keith hadn’t fully realized or possessed a healthy respect for was the real meaning of the Galra creating a literal killing machine. 

On the ground is one of Haggar’s robeasts; small, not as armored as the rest. No doubt premature. From where Shiro’s kneeling near another corpse across the Arena all the way up until where they’re gathered as a gaggle, there’s a line of bodies. Further out, there are bodies scattered, like the handful of officers gathered to watch the execution had hopped out of the stands to fight him as well. There were a few dead in the stands, and another few parts and pieces of aliens that Shiro had clearly fought; Keith can’t tell if he’s looking at arms or legs. 

“Holy shit,” Lance breathes, following Keith’s lead to limp their way across the field to where Shiro’s back is turned, kneeling at the side of a Galra twice his size. Keith doesn’t know how many bodies there are, but given how quiet and empty everything is, how big this ship is and how many parts are strewn around? More than any of them probably want to know. “Hey, Shiro? Buddy?” 

Shiro hasn’t moved but the closer they get, the more obvious it is that he’s swaying slightly. In one hand there’s a glowing red sword, or sickle, maybe, but his other hand looks like it’s caught in the jaws of the Galra he was fighting. Why Shiro hasn’t moved isn’t immediately clear until Keith circles them to Shiro’s right side to try and figure out what’s wrong. The Galra _was_ huge - big enough that his mouth could wrap around the meat of Shiro’s Galra arm, his forearm, and whatever he’d done, he’d ripped it about 80% of the way off of Shiro’s body. The weapon in Shiro’s hand was clearly used to hack at it, but he’d only managed to do a little bit of damage to the innards of the arm and was still caught. They can fix that, though; Keith shakes Lance off gently and feels himself near sick with relief at just the sight of him. Shiro’s turned slowly and started to raise his weapon on instinct but the movement is sluggish, clearly exhausted. It’s only when he catches sight of Keith and it really registers that his shoulders slump back down again and he laughs raggedly. 

“Hey, you think you can give me a hand?” he rasps, stump lifting, wires holding his arm together tugging at the rest of his arm which tugs at the Galra’s head like a puppeteer. 

“I can’t believe Keith was right - your sense of humor _is_ the worst,” Lance mutters, pressing the muzzle at the point closest to the metal of Shiro’s arm rather than to his body. A few moments of building the power and he releases it, the laser blast cutting clean through the metal until Shiro’s suddenly free and rocks back unsteadily. “Hey, hey, don’t f- okay.” 

The motion to catch Shiro is aborted because before he can do it, Keith’s there. It’s nothing more than a clumsy lurch but it doesn’t matter; he sags against Shiro’s weight and Shiro leans back against him. Keith’s not much good at doing anything but standing right now; he gets the brunt of Shiro’s weight and they both sway uncomfortably and then they seem to realize who they’re hugging and can’t stop. It feels weird, not having the other part of his arm to wrap around Keith’s back but he’d been so worried about Shiro dying that he doesn’t _care_. He’s alive - they’re all alive and they’re going to get off this ship and make the Galra pay for it. In the back of his mind, he feels Black and Red both tug at the thin lines connecting them, their anger and agreement a tangible thing, almost. 

“You’re okay?” Shiro asks, the question clearly directed at everyone else, but half muffled by Keith’s hair.

“Dude, we’re fine, you’re the one that went all Terminator on them,” Lance waves the concern off, like they’re not all bleeding and exhausted and their bruises don’t have bruises. Distantly, he’s aware that Lance and the others are talking over each other, coordinating, and then Shiro’s chest rumbles with the sound of his voice layered on top. Between the hit to the face, the blood loss, the concussion and general exhaustion, though, there’s this ringing in his ears that he can’t seem to shake. 

“Shiro, I think I’m--” Keith starts, the words rolling funny in his mouth, not quite making their way out the way he wants them to. He stares up at Shiro a moment, black flickering at the edges of his vision. They’re still talking, behind him. Distantly, tries to put together what’s being said but it all blurs together and a few moments later, the world tilts, shifts, and goes dark. 

Later, he discovers that both he and Shiro had passed out almost within seconds of each other. Between the steadily dripping quintessence from the ragged remains of Shiro’s arm and the injuries sustained on both their parts it was a wonder they stayed standing as long as they did. He wakes up to the sight of everyone save for Shiro piled around the cryo pod and accepts the blanket that Hunk wraps around his shoulders, yawning hugely. 

“He’s still got three more hours to cook,” Lance says sleepily from the couch. After the latest fight where three of them had ended up in the cryo pods, they’d just moved one of the couches into the infirmary and wound up piling on that. Curling on the couch in blankets sounds appealing, but his stomach protests before he can make that decisions. “Hunk made food, should still be warm.” 

“Okay.” Anything more complicated isn’t coming right now. Keith rakes a hand through his hair, grimacing at the dampness left behind by the cryopod. The kitchen isn’t far and he’s not sure what Hunk’s made but it doesn’t matter. Anything’s better than those bars they were tossed while imprisoned. Three more hours until Shiro wakes. He’s likely going to pass out the moment he stops moving, so he takes seconds of everything; it’ll keep until he wakes up and Shiro won’t have to move far to get it. 

On the way back in, he drags the blanket tighter around his shoulders and settles Shiro’s plate off to the side so he can clumsily clamber onto the couch between Hunk and Lance. In front of him, Pidge scoots her pillow over until she can recline back against his legs and keep tapping away at the keyboard. It takes another three hours and twenty minutes but soon enough the hissing wakes him from his groggy doze and the four of them usher him into the blanket nest they’ve made in the center of the room, snacks, water and blankets provided as they fight to put Shiro in the middle. 

“Pidge drove the ship until we found the castle and Coran almost blew us up,” Lance murmurs accusingly, though he settles the moment that Hunk puts one big hand on top of his head and smooths his hand through Lance’s hair. They’ve altered positions, somewhat; Keith and Shiro are in the middle with Pidge on one side and Lance and Hunk flanking on the other, all stretched out across the couch. Lance’s head is pillowed on top of Hunk’s thigh. Pidge has their back to Shiro’s side, one of his arms wrapped around her loosely, while Keith’s tucked in on the other, his legs stretched out alongside Lance, cold toes tucked underneath him. They can’t fall asleep like this or they’re all going to regret it but right now, listening to Shiro’s steady heartbeat and the sound of the others talking quietly, he thinks it’ll work out.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I forgot I had this mostly written so it was a lot less effort than I thought to get this ready. SO UHHH, JUST TAKE IT. It's short; I Just wanted to play around with body horror and angst and mostly this is a dump so I didn't make the original one TOO shippy since OP never got back to me on what pairings they wanted. It's disjointed because I didn't really do a whole lot of build up or down but I'm trying to get better about posting bits and pieces that can stand (ish) alone on their own, so.

It’s the Arena, again. This time, though, instead of all of them spilling into the dirt pit and coming upon a slew of bodies heaped across the ground, there’s just one. It looks tiny, compared to the sheer size of the stadium around them. Keith looks around, desperate, but just like last time there’s no one there; it’s empty. 

“Guys?” The other paladins aren’t with him, either; it’s just him and this lump at the other end of the pit. For a moment, his mind can’t make sense of it. It’s empty, but there are signs of a fight. There’s a bloodied spear in the ground, dirt clumping against the streaks of red and green on it. When he edges closer to something else, he realizes it’s a breastplate, upside down. The color’s too scuffed to make out whose it is. Whatever pried it off had enormous hands, though; there are scratches along the inside and outside of it, like whoever did it peeled it off like the lid off a can of beans. 

Keith walks, but doesn’t seem to get any closer to whatever is at the other end and his mind can’t seem to make sense of any of what he’s seeing. There’s a growing, awful feeling of unease that he can’t shake. Whatever is at the other end of this pit is something he doesn’t want to see; every fiber of his being is telling him to run, to get off this ship, to find the others but every time he tries to turn around, he’s only walking towards it. 

Another piece of armor is in his path, but when he picks it up, there’s a sucking noise, like pulling something from the mud. It _is_ mud, he realizes, rust dark and smelling like metal. For a moment, his mind doesn’t want to put two and two together, but the realization is slow and certain. Galra don’t bleed red; this is human blood and a paladin’s thigh plate. He keeps coming closer - never at a run, never more than a slow, steady pace, a funeral march. The next piece of armor he pulls up is also wet with dirt and blood, but when he wipes it on his thigh, he sees an edge of Black and it’s like everything slams into place at once. 

“Shiro!” 

He’s barely aware of himself yelling it, too busy trying to jerk forward and run at the-- God, it’s a body, Shiro’s body at the end of the Arena. No matter how hard he tries, though, it’s still the same pace and Shiro never seems to get any closer. The spotlights beat down on him and then one by one start to click out until there’s just him, the path toward Shiro and nothing else. No sound, nothing but the noise of his own ragged, panicked breathing as he fights toward him. Finally, something snaps and he stumbles over his own legs in his rush to get to Shiro. The comm on his helmet isn’t working consistently, but maybe Shiro still has his because Keith hasn’t found it yet. 

Faith renewed, he sprints forward and skids on his knees once he’s close enough, babbling with his urgency to get Shiro up, awake, to respond. He’s face-down on the ground, a puddle underneath him, armor removed, black undersuit torn and helmet scratched to hell, dented. 

“Shiro, Shiro, hey, wake up, come on. There’s no one here, we can escape,” Keith fumbles the first attempt, hands shaking, and then manages to get his fingers around the meat of Shiro’s shoulder, using that to drag him up and onto his back, but it takes every bit of strength to do it. Shiro flops onto his back like a puppet, limp. There’s no rising or falling to his chest, but the black under armor is ripped and torn in so many places it may as well not exist. What dirt and blood doesn’t cover is mottled with bruises.

“No, no-” Keith breathes, and his eyes make their way up Shiro’s shoulders, to his throat and then - then. 

It takes a moment to really recognize what he’s seeing. Shiro’s wearing his helmet, but it-- it’s wrong. It’s crumpled in, like a water bottle that collapsed in on itself, except it’s -- that’s Shiro’s face. It’s impossible to make out, the gore too much to tell that whatever was under there was human, but Keith knows. There’s black and white hair matted with blood, and over the awful, ragged noise of his own breathing he hears something coming from the helmet. 

“ _Keith._ Keith, come on, please, Keith--” 

It’s Shiro’s voice, clear as a bell, no mistaking it, except Shiro’s voice can’t be coming from him because Shiro’s face isn’t _there_. Whatever he fought, whatever pried him out of the armor also was strong enough to break through the glass of the helmet and-- 

“Shiro?” he doesn’t recognize the sound of his own voice; there’s no fury, no righteous anger to hold onto, there’s just the shallow, trembling sound of his breathing and one, quiet word of question to an empty arena. It’s not right; they found him, Shiro won, he got himself out and they escaped, this isn’t right, this isn’t how it happened. 

From the helmet, the voice grows louder. “Keith, God, please. Please, I need you to-” 

A trick from Haggar, maybe, or worse, the helmet’s so broken it’s repeating whatever was said into it last; he doesn’t know. What he does know, is that Shiro could have died begging Keith to fix this, to stop it, begged Keith to show up and he wasn’t _there_. Shiro died alone in the Arena and Keith wasn’t _there_. The scream starts somewhere in the pit of his stomach - he won’t let himself be sick, but all of the anger, rage and fear boil up inside him and need to be released somehow. It bubbles up his chest, carving up the inside of him, hollowing him out like a spoon scraping the innards of a cantaloupe out until it exits as this awful, animal sound. 

“Keith, please, you gotta--” Shiro’s voice is louder, now, sharp and suddenly, Keith’s not in the Arena anymore. It’s hot; he’s sweating through his armor - no, his clothes, and he can’t move. Something’s wrapped around his legs despite how hard he kicks and his arms are pressed tight to his chest, held by a solid weight behind him. “Keith, baby, I need you to wake up. It’s just a dream.” 

There are no spotlights above him; there’s just the soft peach glow of the reading light that Shiro uses at night to review Altean texts. The heat isn’t from the sand, or the Arena: it’s from being tangled in the blankets, sleeping fully under them while pressed against a human furnace. Shiro’s not a limp jumble of limbs on the ground, face caved in; he’s pressed his face into the curve of Keith’s shoulder and is murmuring low and comforting under his breath. 

“Shiro--” Keith gasps, straining mindlessly against everything holding him but Shiro has him too tightly pinned, impossible to fight. He wheezes out a panicked breath and then lets his head thunk against Shiro’s chest, trembling. “ _Shiro_?” 

The second version of his name is no less choked than the second, but it’s muffled into Shiro’s chest, his face pressing into it for a moment. Finally, he stops fighting, stops wrestling against the arms and legs holding him down so Shiro gradually releases him. The moment that there’s nothing forcing him down, Keith scrambles. The blankets are kicked to the side and Shiro is shoved against the plush headboard, Keith’s hands flying to his chest to brace himself as he settles in Shiro’s lap. Then, his hands skitter up, pressing against his jaw, his cheeks, thumbs smoothing over the scar on his nose. It’s whole. 

Shiro’s whole. Whole, and confused, watching Keith with no small amount of concern but letting himself get pawed up to assuage whatever Keith’s fears are. “I’m okay,” Shiro murmurs cautiously, lifting his own hands to cover Keith’s, tugging one in and then the other so he can press kisses to both palms. Blessedly, he doesn’t ask what Keith was having a nightmare about. These days, one or both of them get them at least once a night in varying levels, if they’re not dealing with insomnia and if one of them wants to talk about it, they will. 

“You’re okay,” Keith says, too loud in the quiet of their room, for this time of night. Shiro’s face is not even bruised and the scar across his nose is long since faded. “You’re _okay_.” 

“We’re all okay,” Shiro assures in return, gingerly shifting so that Keith can fold in against him, tucking his head underneath Shiro’s chin. There’s no way for him to curl up into Shiro’s lap, not when the years gave him about six more inches of height and more muscle, but Shiro’s good at hugs. He wraps Keith up so solidly that there’s no room left for him to worry about anything else. Wordless, he tucks his face into Shiro’s throat and holds tight until his fingers start to ache. "You guys did it, we're all home safe." 

"As many times as it takes," Keith promises under his breath, loud enough that Shiro can hear it. " _As many times_." 

"I know. I believe you." Under him, Shiro's chest vibrates with the low rumble of Shiro's laughter; it's not mocking, it's soft, his human hand stroking back and forth over Keith's back while they lie there.

**Author's Note:**

> you can follow me [here](https://twitter.com/SarahKFetter) on twitter or catch me at Dragon Con/NYCC coming up! Also depending on my schedule I'll probably toss the 2nd chapter up which is just silly nightmare h/c bullshit because I wrote it for myself and figured why not.


End file.
